'Rewilding' Later Prehistory Project

We brought the wild with us 🐾 to last week’s Bronze Age Forum!
Grateful to our hosts @ucddublin.bsky.social for an engaging programme and warm welcome! #Archaeology #BronzeAgeForum #WilderPasts

🚀 New open‑access article! “People and time in nature: Positioning archaeology in an ecoclimate crisis.”
🔗 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

#OpenAccess #Archaeology #ClimateCrisis #WildWednesdays

Archaeology in Wilding @ Knepp

What happens when archaeology meets rewilding? 🦴🌿
Our recent 'Archaeology in Wilding' workshop @kneppwilding.bsky.social explored how nature recovery and archaeology can thrive together.

Read the story here 👉 www.oxfordarchaeology.com/news/archaeo...

@oxfordarchaeology.bsky.social @wildwednesdays

Great to meet such a diverse and lively group of archaeologists, ecologists, farmers, geographers etc at our 'Archaeology in Wilding' workshop earlier this month. Thank you @kneppwilding.bsky.social for the beautiful venue, Guerilla Archaeology and all others who contributed! #WildWednesdays

Last week we were on the road again at the International Working Group for Palaeoethnobotany, Groningen. Topics ranged from experimental pit storage, prehistoric food crusts, community-designed Roman gardens & wild plant fibres & recipes-looking forward to IWGP Berlin 2028! #WildWednesdays

The project team have been out and about quite a bit lately, but here's our most professional looking photo of Lou assessing stored monolith samples from the 1980s Fenland Survey project! Fingers crossed they deliver the goods! #WildWednesdays #Archaeology #HardCoreLife

Rewilding Later Prehistory visited beautiful Rewilding Coombeshead last week and discovered a talent for pig whispering! #WildWednesdays

What can be happier than zooarchaeologists among red deer?? Adrienne shared this great photo from their ‘road trip’ to collect reference material at @kneppwilding.bsky.social -including Tamworth pig remains (a better match for archaeological pig than our modern breeds) #WildWednesdays #Archaeology

Project lead Anwen Cooper and archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby chat to Pete Leeson about nature, farming and archaeology in the latest @treeamblepodcast
Check it out here: shorturl.at/6DzSy
#WildWednesdays #archaeology #naturerecovery @oxfordarchaeology.bsky.social

The fish bones found in this Later Bronze/Iron Age burial from Stanground, Peterborough came from a pike of estimated 1m length, but are they trash or treasure?
A fish of this considerable size may well have been considered a worthy funerary offering (ref: Boismier 2021) #WildWednesdays #Archaeology

Thwing, 2009. A screen print by Rose Ferraby. The composition features a mix of geometric and organic shapes. A large, elongated, triangular shape dominates the centre, and is textured to echo the steep sided valleys of the Yorkshire Wolds with a mix of dots, lines, and solid areas. Other shapes include rectangles, circles, and free-form elements. The image has a layered quality and different textures and colours have been applied in stages. The primary colors are various shades of green, ranging from light pastel to darker, more saturated tones. These are contrasted with a soft, warm beige background. A few small elements are rendered in white and a dark, almost black, line. A circular motif in the upper right corner consists of a series of concentric rings resonant of barrows in plan form. The image has a calm, contemplative quality due to its soft colors and abstract composition. The use of texture and layering adds visual interest and depth.

From the archives:

Ferraby, R. 2017 Geophysics: creativity and the archaeological imagination, Internet Archaeology 44. doi.org/10.11141/ia.... 🏺
Rose explores archaeology as a creative practice by engaging specifically with the processes and visuals of geophysics.

Resident geoarchaeologist Dave Kay has been out in the sunshine at @kneppwilding.bsky.social looking at the effects of rewilding on soil structure - accompanied by the usually pretty elusive ponies! #WildWednesdays

Tonight!!! See link below 👇

Cattle grazing by the River Adur, with Knepp Castle ruin in the background

A distant view of two fallow deer by a pond of recent origin

A beaver dam on the edge of woodland, holding back the water behind it

Three Tamworth pigs sleeping next to a tree

For #WorldRewildingDay, some pictures from a recent visit to @kneppwilding.bsky.social - the animals roam a landscape that looks very different from its more agricultural days but is nevertheless still shaped by historic patterns of routeways, boundaries and structures

How do we imagine human’s place in nature in prehistory? Most reconstructions center on settlements, with nature fading into the backdrop, a hazy periphery. This image of Grim’s Bank by Peter Lorimer takes a different approach, as a woman in the countryside looks on from outside #WildWednesdays

Anwen Cooper talking and gesticulating, with a large wooden fish trap in the foreground.

The interior of a wooden eel trap, with circular lines of weaving, tying lengths of wood together.

A stack of books including (top to bottom) Ladybird ‘Stone Age Man in Britain’, Jake Fiennes ‘Land Healer’, Jacquetta Hawkes ’A Land’, Jacquetta Hawkes ‘Early Britain’, Nick Hayes and Jon Moses (eds) ‘Wild Service’, and Isabella Tree ‘Wilding’.

Detail of a model wattle hurdle with a museum label (MERL 68/100).

Amazing ‘Voices’ gallery tour @themerl.bsky.social today with the brilliant Anwen Cooper from @oxfordarchaeology.bsky.social / @rewildarch.bsky.social, discussing rewilding, early farming, more-than-human histories and prehistories, @kneppwilding.bsky.social, and much more!

Ancient Drinking Culture: The Langstone Tankard . . . In December 2007, Craig Mills discovered a complete wooden tankard while metal-...

Anyone for a pint? The roughly 2000 year old Langstone Tankard is one of several examples of Iron Age/Roman tankards made of (potentially toxic) yew wood.
It can hold four pints, so if the taxins don't finish you off, the ale might do!
museum.wales/articles/120...
#WildWednesdays #Archaeology

We have several more upcoming talks, including alongside a stellar line-up at the 'Where the Wild Things Were' rewilding symposium in Lifton, Devon 🐻🐌🐸🦅
www.ticketsource.co.uk/keep-it-wild...
See also our website: rewilding.oxfordarchaeology.com/publications...
#WildWednesdays #Archaeology #Ecology

Artist Miranda Creswell has been out at @kneppwilding.bsky.social and shared these lovely working shots with us on the theme of ‘What lies beyond’- bringing together the past and present, visible and invisible 😍😍😍
#WildWednesdays #Archaeology #Ecology

A view facing south down the Lye Valley Fen walkway in Oxford. The raised walkway bisects two areas of sloping valley fen with short green winter vegetation on its surface. Two people stand on the walkway facing the camera.

Project palynologist Lou has been out at Lye Valley Fen, hearing about the challenges faced in rescuing alkaline fen and its underlying peat when surrounded by urban conurbation - as outlined by expert ecologist and palynologist, Judy Webb #WildWednesdays #Archaeoecology

Antler rake/pick from Early Bronze Age pit at Moulsford, excavated by TVAS. Found alongside other remains including aurochs, amphibian & cattle. Molluscs suggest the pit was dug shortly after surrounding woodland was cleared. Perhaps returning to the earth some of what had been taken?#WildWednesdays

The Essay - EarthWorks - Stone - BBC Sounds Archaeologist Rose Ferraby explores rock art in Northumberland.

Rose Ferraby and project PI Anwen Cooper head to Hepple Wilds in Northumberland in search of prehistoric rock art and landscape connection on Monday’s episode of BBC Radio 3's ‘The Essay’- check it out here! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
#WildWednesdays #Archaeology #Prehistory

Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain - Nature An analysis of ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA shows evidence of matrilocal communities in Iron Age Britain.

All about understanding Matrilineal society in what is now Britain. Brilliant and careful work using multi disciplinary research
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excavated in 1960, this Early Bronze Age barrow burial at Amesbury contained a number of wood, antler and bronze implements including an oak 'club' or beater. These were interpreted as the toolkit of a leather worker, but perhaps other interpretations are possible?
#WildWednesdays #Archaeology

A beautiful shot of (?Ceratodon purpureus) moss at Fountains Abbey by @roseferraby. Heathland mosses can often be identified in prehistoric samples, such as those from this Early Bronze Age turf-built burial mound at Pen-y-Fan, at the highest point of the Brecon Beacons. #WildWednesdays #Archaeology

Some yuletide (archaeo)botany to send you on your way: Iron Age mistletoe fragments from Wardy Hill Ringwork, Ely &
a recent article on the UK's big mistletoe 'comeback' (possibly thanks to warmer winters & the Eurasian blackcap!)
shorturl.at/vEEUC #WildWednesdays #Archaeobotany #Archaeology

A great conference session filled with fascinating talks on the archaeology of wolves, falconry birds, deer, pigeons, rabbits, puffins and much more - big thanks to the conference speakers! @oxfordarchaeology.bsky.social

A shallow clay vessel with three clay birds attached to the inside.

Another personal highlight from today‘s museum visit: a Late Bronze Age bowl with three waterbirds. When filled, the birds would have appeared to swim. Birds are highly important symbols in LBA religion.
Klein Döbbern, 10th-9th century BC. Archäologisches Landesmuseum Brandenburg. #archaeology

Cutting from the Belfast Telegraph (original story in the Daily Express) headlined 'London of By-Gone Age. Pictured by mammoth find.'

Drawing by Amédée Forestier in the Illustrated London News (29 Nov 1924) showing hippos, mammoths and woodland with Nelson's column behind, headlined 'Trafalgar Square in the Ice Age: a vision of past and present'

On 21 Nov 1924 the Daily Express reported lyrically on ‘London of By-Gone Age’: “Did the giant mammoth once rove the deep forest glades of Piccadilly and Pall Mall? Did the monster hippopotamus slough and wallow in the ooze of the river as it meandered through the jungle of Trafalgar Square?" #OTD 🧵